[RndTbl] Climate change is messing with GPS time-keeping!

Adam Thompson athompso at athompso.net
Thu Aug 5 17:03:33 CDT 2021


Gilbert didn't propose any such thing, he reported on what he read AND 
PROVIDED HIS SOURCES.

The twitter thread linked goes on to reference a GitLab discussion about 
Linux's gpsd daemon and a fix to deal with some upcoming problems.
The Gary Miller who originally mentioned a connection to climate change 
in the GitLab thread is "the GPS and PPS guy" on the NTPSec project.

While I don't know that any of the people cited, indirectly or not, are 
necessarily a worldwide authority on geodetic science, I do trust that 
they know a lot more about it, particularly as it relates to 
timekeeping, than I do.

Quick googling reveals that we haven't needed any of the 
previously-expected leap seconds since 2016 due to a small increase in 
the earth's rotational speed:
* https://www.timeanddate.com/time/negative-leap-second.html
* https://www.timeanddate.com/time/earth-faster-rotation.html
* 
https://www.masterclock.com/company/masterclock-inc-blog/will-we-have-a-negative-leap-second

Regardless of any connection to climate change, that's worth knowing if 
you run a high-stratum NTP server.  Or a buggy GPS receiver, for that 
matter... :-(

And supposedly (if I knew what on earth I was looking at!) here's the 
raw data showing the increase in the earth's rotational speed:
* https://datacenter.iers.org/data/6/bulletina-xxxiv-030.txt

Nothing I could find in ~5 minutes of searching either substantiated OR 
refuted the supposed link between climate change and the earth's 
rotation, so, please, cite anything you can find, pro OR con.  Yes, it's 
a stretch, but that claim came from a - literal - worldwide expert on 
certain aspects of timekeeping, who presumably read or heard it 
somewhere he thought was reliable.

-Adam


On 2021-08-05 15:31, Daulton wrote:
> Hi Gilbert,
> 
> How is it you propose that "climate change" is actually speeding up
> the rotation of the earth? This seems like a very long stretch of an
> assertion. According to other sources, "the speed of the Earth’s
> rotation varies constantly due to the motion of its molten core,
> oceans and atmosphere, as well as the effect of celestial bodies such
> as the Moon".
> 
> Daulton
> 
> On Thursday, August 05, 2021 14:44 CDT, "Gilbert E. Detillieux"
> <gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca> wrote:
> 
>> For those of you who took in Wyatt's May presentation on setting up a
>> GPS-based NTP server,...
>> 
>> https://muug.ca/meetings/20-21.html#may
>> 
>> ... you may be interested in this bit of weirdness...
>> 
>> https://twitter.com/ariadneconill/status/1422163289518313474?s=21
>> TIL: Climate change has resulted in the earth spinning faster,
>> cancelling out leap seconds.
>> 
>> “As I previously said, the reason it will affect live GPS is due to, 
>> and
>> I hate to say it, global warming causing the earth to speed up,
>> unexpectedly.”
>> 
>> So, now you know!...  :)
>> 
>> Gilbert
>> 
>> --
>> Gilbert E. Detillieux        E-mail:  <gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca>
>> Dept. of Computer Science    Web:     http://cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/
>> University of Manitoba
>> Winnipeg MB CANADA  R3T 2N2
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> 
> 
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